Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 26 (1995)

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442

GUTIERREZ de MARTINEZ v. LAMAGNO

Souter, J., dissenting

ficient federal question to bring the case into federal court, and " 'considerations of judicial economy, convenience and fairness to litigants,' " ante, at 436, quoting Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U. S. 715, 726 (1966), are sufficient to keep it there even after a judicial determination that the United States is not the proper defendant.

But the fallacy of this conclusion appears as soon as one recalls the fact that substitution of the United States as defendant (which establishes federal-question jurisdiction) is exclusively dependant on the scope-of-employment certification. The challenge to the certification is thus the equivalent of a challenge to the essential jurisdictional fact that the United States is a party, and the federal court's jurisdiction to review scope of employment (on the principal opinion's theory) is merely an example of any court's necessary authority to rule on a challenge to its own jurisdiction to try a particular action. To argue, as the principal opinion does, that authority to determine scope of employment justifies retention of jurisdiction whenever evidence bearing on jurisdiction and liability overlaps, is therefore tantamount to saying the authority to determine whether a court has jurisdiction over the cause of action supplies the very jurisdiction that is subject to challenge. It simply obliterates the distinction between the authority to determine jurisdiction and the jurisdiction that is the subject of the challenge, and the party whose jurisdictional claim was challenged will never lose: litigating the question whether an employee's allegedly tortious acts fall within the scope of employment will, of course, always require some evidence to show what the acts were. Accordingly, there will always be overlap between evidence going to the scope-of-employment determination and evidence bearing on the underlying liability claimed by the plaintiff, and for this reason federal-question jurisdiction in these cases becomes inevitable on the Court's view. The right to challenge it therefore becomes meaningless, as does

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